And it's just about 8 o'clock, you're listening to WBAI in New York, and it's time for Off
the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall, I cut myself while shaving, now
Now I can't make a cough It couldn't get much worse
But if they could they would Bum diddly bum
But I best expect the worst I hope that's understood
Bum diddly bum!
Apparently, the Christian Coalition, our friends that are always looking out for us,
they're actually pushing the passing of the Communications Decency Act.
In fact, they set up a couple of 800 numbers to call some of our favorite congressmen
to rally in favor of the passing of this ridiculous act.
You don't say!
But in fact, you're free to call these 800 numbers to protest the Communications Decency Act.
You're free to call these 800 numbers for whatever purpose you wish to communicate to your senators and congressmen.
You might want to call them from home, though, being that you'll be passing your phone number to the Christian Coalition,
probably getting all kinds of ridiculous mail from them.
The Christian Coalition pays for this, so they do get a list of everybody that calls.
However, if they call you and they try to push various propaganda upon you
and they meet with the kind of reaction that you no doubt give them,
they may think twice about their place in this society.
Yeah.
What are those numbers?
Yeah, these numbers are both 800 numbers.
800-962-3524.
And the other is 800-972-3524.
And people can call those numbers 24 hours a day to register their feelings towards Congress.
Yep.
And have the Christian Coalition pick up the bill.
Yeah.
That's very nice of them.
Thank you, Christian Coalition, for this service.
Now let's read the little press release here.
Outrageous proposals to censor the Internet.
Demand that the Internet community take swift and immediate action.
We must stand up and let Congress know that we will not tolerate their attempts to destroy this medium.
Join hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens in a national day of protest on Tuesday, December 12.
As you know, on Wednesday, the Census Bureau decency thing we were talking about before,
on Wednesday, December 6, the House Conference Committee on Telecommunications Reform
voted to impose far-reaching and unconstitutional indecency restrictions on the Internet and other interactive media,
including large commercial online services such as America Online, CompuServe, and Prodigy,
and smaller Internet service providers such as Panix, The Well, Echo, and MindVox.
These restrictions threaten the very existence of the Internet and interactive media
as a viable medium for free expression, education, commerce.
If enacted, the Internet as we know it will never be the same.
Libraries will not be able to put any books online that might offend a child somewhere.
No Catcher in the Rye or Ulysses on the Net.
Internet service providers could face criminal penalties for allowing children to subscribe to their Internet services,
forcing many small companies to simply refuse to sell their services to anyone under 18.
Worst of all, everything you say and publish on the Net will have to be dumbed down to that which is acceptable to a child,
sort of like network TV.
Can you imagine that?
As Internet users, we simply must not allow this assault against the Internet
and our most basic freedoms to go unchallenged.
Tuesday, December 12th, the organizations below are urging you to join us in a national day of protest.
The goal is to flood key members of the House and Senate with phone calls, faxes, and email
with the message that the Internet community will not tolerate congressional attempts to destroy the Internet,
limit our freedoms, and trample on our rights.
Let's see if we can give out any more phone numbers.
This goes on throughout the night as well, I guess.
Contact as many members of Congress on a list as you can.
This is the part I don't understand here.
If you are only able to make one call, contact House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Isn't he already opposed to this?
What's the point of contacting him if he's already opposed to it?
I mean, he knows that people are against this.
He might change his mind if he gets a thousand calls an hour.
I don't know, but maybe you should call him and compliment him on his feelings towards this.
Finally, if the senator or representative from your state is on the list below,
be sure to contact him or her also.
Let's take a look at this list and see who's on there from New York.
There's nobody on here from New York.
Okay.
How about that?
These are, I guess, the representatives that voted for this in the first place.
I don't see anybody even from the area here.
They're mostly out in the Midwest someplace.
There's one from Hawaii.
Okay.
You want to call Robert Dole, for instance.
You'd call 202-224-6521.
But, you know, with those 800 numbers we gave you, you can just be transferred anywhere you want.
So you just call that 800 number and, you know, you want to do that right now?
I've never dialed in this phone before, so I don't know if it's actually going to work.
Yeah, that's true.
Okay.
Let's give it a shot.
See if we can get a dial tone first of all.
Can we get a dial tone?
Okay.
We have a dial tone.
Now can we dial?
I think we can dial.
Okay.
This is going to work.
800.
Yeah.
962.
3524.
It's coming to you very live over the radio.
We have a ring.
Capitol?
Yes, this is the Capitol building.
Can I be transferred to any House office or Senate office?
Yes.
I can.
Okay.
Is there somebody there 24 hours a day?
No, we're here 24 hours a day, but they aren't.
I see.
Do they have machines and things like that that'll take messages?
Some of them do.
Okay.
Can I be transferred to Newt Gingrich's line?
Okay.
Hold on.
Thank you very much.
See how easy it is.
Speaker's office.
Yes, hi.
This is Speaker Newt Gingrich's office?
Yes, it is.
Hi, I'm calling from WBAI Radio in New York.
We were just wondering if you guys have gotten a lot of phone calls today
concerning the internet protest day.
No, sir, we haven't.
You haven't gotten many phone calls, huh?
No, sir.
Have you gotten any?
Let me check.
Okay.
We have had internet censorship.
Yeah.
We have had 12 calls.
12 calls?
Yes, sir.
Okay, well that's something then.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Well, I guess that makes us 13.
12 calls.
What's going on here?
This is embarrassing.
12 calls.
Unless he's lying, of course, but I don't know.
I think the internet protest community has got some work to do.
If we can only muster 12 calls in the entire internet.
Well, he's in favor.
Maybe we should try calling someone who's against.
That's true, but like I said, this thing was saying everybody should call Newt Gingrich
if they call anybody, and even if they didn't question,
I expect most people would just do this without questioning it.
He should have gotten hundreds of calls.
Well, we should ask for Jim Exxon and ask the same question.
You know, you're right.
Excellent.
What's that 800 number again?
Okay.
I hate to keep racking up the bill here.
1-800.
Yeah.
962.
962.
3524.
Okay.
Hi, can I have Jim Exxon's office, please?
Oh, this is fun.
We have reached the offices of Senator Jim Exxon from Nebraska.
Our offices are now closed.
If you'd like to leave a message, please do so after the tone.
You have pressed an incorrect key.
I can hack his voicemail.
If you still want to leave a message for this person, press 3, or simply stay on the line.
I'm going to hit star.
Goodbye.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
All right.
Well, they play hardball over there in the Capital District.
But you see the possibilities are endless.
But let's get the message out.
That's the most important thing.
Okay.
So Internet Protest Day.
That's what's going on as far as that goes.
Saying they could not depend on Congress to protect free speech on the Internet,
the ACLU said that it would challenge in court any of the online censuses
proposals now being considered by a House-Senate conference committee.
In a vote on December 6, the House members of the Congressional Conference Committee
on the Telecommunications Bill betrayed their chamber's earlier vote to reject censorship
on the Internet.
All of Congress' proposals violate the First Amendment and privacy rights of adults
to communicate freely in the online environment, said Barry Steinhardt,
ACLU Associate Director.
Congress is making it ever more clear that we will have to turn to the courts
to uphold free speech in the promising new medium of cyberspace.
The ACLU rejected as unconstitutional the proposals offered by Senator J. James Exxon,
Democrat of Nebraska, Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa,
and Representative Henry Hyde, Republican of Illinois,
as well as the one offered by Representative Rick White, Republican of Washington.
The House conferees voted today on, actually voted on December 6th,
or was it the 7th, on how to respond to the Senate's provisions on Internet censorship.
Although they first adopted the White censorship proposal,
which the media widely and inaccurately portrayed as a compromise,
they then amended it to include the Senate's standard for censorship.
Last August, the House won widespread praise from the online community
when it adopted an amendment to encourage Internet providers
to better develop screening technologies for parents to use
in controlling what their children see in cyberspace.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich went as far as to call the Senate version of the legislation
a clear violation of free speech and a violation of the right of adults to communicate with each other.
Unfortunately, said ACLU Legislative Counsel Donald Haynes,
the House members graciously accepted their applause for opposing censorship
and then, in a legislative sleight of hand, turned right around
and came up with their own scheme to censor what people say and see on the Internet.
So it's like a constant battleground, different proposals going back and forth,
and basically we wind up being the losers.
So it's very important that people voice their opinions.
Let's give out those 800 numbers one more time, and we'll move on to some other things.
They're 800-962-3524 and 800-972-3524.
And they go to the same place?
Yeah, supposedly they're supposed to both go to the Capitol building.
Here's something else going on in Poland.
NASK, a Polish monopolistic country-wide Internet provider,
recently announced its plans to change the charging scheme for its services,
effective January 1, 1996.
According to the new price list, NASK is going to charge on a per-byte basis
at over one U.S. dollar per two megabytes,
instead of current per-bandwidth charges.
This idea, together with almost tenfold increase in prices,
is perceived by the Polish Internet community as being suicidal for the Internet in Poland.
Many of Poland's major Internet service administrators immediately announced
they will not be able to provide their services upon the introduction of new charges.
So far, NASK seems to arrogantly ignore all the general voices.
NASK was founded to maintain Poland's academic network
and is sponsored financially by the Polish government.
And you can help Polish Internet survive by joining us in protest
and spreading the word about that as well.
So yeah, the United States is not the only place where the Internet is in trouble.
Anything else happening this week?
Hmm. Not a whole hell of a lot, actually.
Yeah? Well, how about this?
There's a tariff filed by AT&T November 29th.
You're going to love this.
Among other things, they'll increase interstate cent paid coin service charges
and transport rates with an overall increase of 9.7%.
Okay, big deal.
They'll increase selected interstate charges for AT&T Reach Out America plans,
about 2 to 6% per plan.
Apply a non-subscriber service charge of 40 cents per message
to domestic interladder interstate dial station calls
originated from residential lines which are pre-subscribed to an inter-exchange carrier
other than AT&T or not pre-subscribed to any inter-exchange carrier.
This charge is in addition to the initial period charges
applicable to calls from points in the mainland in Hawaii
to points throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
These charges are effective December 1st.
Do you realize what this means?
That charging a surcharge if you don't use AT&T and then you dial 102-88.
Is that incredible that they actually have the gall to do this?
They're kind of like forcing you to be part of AT&T, and if you're not,
well, if you try to use our service, we'll just charge you 40 cents more per call.
Well, I mean, I don't know if you could really argue.
I mean, some long-distance companies won't even let you use their carrier without being a subscriber.
Hey, that's okay. If AT&T doesn't want any casual customers
that aren't pre-subscribed customers, cut themselves off.
That's fine with me, but to charge people a penalty?
I mean, that just seems pretty arrogant.
They just mean business.
Yeah, well, I don't think it's very good business when you do something like that.
No one's ever done it before. No one's ever charged, you know.
I mean, yeah, they've not allowed people to do it, period.
But to charge them an excessive amount, and this is an excessive amount,
40 cents per call, I assume that's what per message means.
I don't know why they call it that.
I don't think this is going to fly very well with lots of other places,
and I'm sure all the other long-distance companies are going to use this in their advertising to say,
hey, you can still use us even if you don't pre-subscribe.
You know, it seems like they're trying to put the pressure on a little bit too much.
And let's see. That's pretty much what's going on.
National Caller ID. How's that working out?
Well, I assume that it's still chugging along, and more and more areas are becoming available.
Actually, I've heard that it's not working in very many places.
In fact, the FCC has pushed back the deadline a little bit.
Some places, telephone companies with switches lacking custom local area signaling service capabilities,
have until January 1, 1997, to upgrade those switches to recognize CPN blocking and unblocking requests.
In the meantime, these phone companies must suppress CPN transport to interconnecting carriers from these switches.
Basically, it's not working in very many places.
It's working in some places, but not a whole lot.
Well, I would assume that it's working in all the major metropolitan areas.
Well, I guess we can find out from those people that have Caller ID if they want to call us and tell us if it's working or not.
We'll hear from them, I guess.
All right, so that's pretty much it as far as that goes.
We have an update on the PSI story.
I don't know if we want to tell people what's going on with that,
but PSI is basically the Internet provider that we're having quite a dispute with as far as their ISDN service.
A number of months ago, they claimed to offer what's known as data over voice capability,
which allows you to connect at 56K and bypass the penny-a-minute charge that 9X puts on for their 64K connections.
We called them up in August.
We asked them, do you offer this service?
They said yes.
We said, okay, great, sign us up.
We signed up.
We paid, and then they told us we don't offer that service.
Now it looks like we're about to get involved in a big, long court battle with them.
Next week at this time, either the court battle will be resolved
or you will hear for yourself PSI claiming to offer a service that they do not offer.
So tune in next week at this time.
Also, you might want to check out our website at 2600.com
because we're also going to be putting up some evidence there as well.
You can judge for yourself whether or not PSI deserves to serve the Internet community.
That's something that I think we need to focus upon.
If you have problems like this with your providers,
please let us know because we want to be a sounding board for this kind of thing.
A lot of people have already contacted us asking us,
should I go with this company, should I not go with this company?
Basically, it's good to be able to provide them with information,
say, well, this company did this.
You might want to reconsider signing up with a company that has business policies like this.
So that's what we're here for.
If you have any information, you can e-mail us, too.
My address, Emanuel, at 2600.com.
Fibers is fiber at 2600.com.
It's P-H-I-B-E-R, and it's 2600, not spelled out.
Anything else?
Any other updates?
Can't say all too much has been going on lately.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, then, in that case, let's go to the phones.
212-279-3400 is our telephone number.
Let us know what's going on in your world.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Go ahead.
Speak up.
Yeah.
Emanuel.
Speak up, please.
Okay.
I got you.
Are you there?
Yeah.
I can echo.
Well, that's because your radio is on.
Emanuel.
Turn your radio down, and you'll be fine.
Okay.
What's up?
Okay.
Yeah, Emanuel, I have a question.
What's your question?
I have a couple questions.
Well, we'll start with question number one,
and then we'll move on to question number two.
How do you make your phone ring?
How do I make my phone ring?
Or how does general people make their phone ring?
Well, there's different ways.
It depends where you are.
What's your area code?
I realize it might be a tough question,
but your area code are the first three numbers
of your phone number.
Yeah, it's 718.
718.
Okay.
What works with 718?
660?
Depending on what your switch type is.
If you're on a 5VSS,
then you would normally dial 660
and the last four digits of your phone number.
And then when you get the dial tone back,
flash the switch hook once and hang up.
But you're on DMS.
On DMS-100, you dial 660
and your full seven-digit number
and do the same thing.
Then your phone should ring.
Yeah.
You should just try both, actually.
There's other ways to make your phone ring, too,
ranging from calling people
and asking them to call you,
having the operator call you,
three-waying and then dropping something
and having it ring you back.
Right.
Something like that.
I have another question.
Okay.
On the blue box thing,
what do you mean by crystal?
Blue box thing.
Can you be a little more specific?
The crystal.
Yeah.
Yeah, the blue box.
What do you mean by crystal?
What do we mean by crystal?
Yeah.
Do you have any idea what this is about?
No, unless he means red box.
Do you mean red box?
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Red, blue, what's the difference?
Yeah, it's just colors.
But, okay, as far as the crystal.
All right, what kind of crystal?
Six and a half megahertz crystal.
6.5 or 6.499 or 6.5 whatever.
6.5 is the closest.
Okay, 6.5.
Despite popular belief.
All right.
What do you mean by that?
What do I mean by it?
Yes.
I mean nothing whatsoever by it.
Okay, but what do you mean by crystal?
Crystal is an electronics component.
Uh-huh.
Does that answer your question?
All right.
Well, it's going to have to do.
It's just going to have to do.
I'm afraid we can't stay on this subject forever.
Good evening.
You're on BAI.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Yes, so what can you do about mass emailings?
What's that noise?
Well, I'm sitting in my car.
Yeah, I'll turn it off.
Okay, I'm sorry.
What is that, your door open or something?
No, I'm sitting in my car with the key in the ignition.
Oh.
And it's not running.
It sounded like a nuclear explosion was imminent or something.
Sorry.
All right, so you're on a cellular phone.
Yes.
You realize that people can hear this conversation.
I'm not saying anything that nobody can hear.
Well, they can hear it on the radio anyway.
Shh.
Don't tell people that.
Okay, yes, what's your question?
I've been getting a lot of mass emailings, like from multiple-level marketing scams and all kinds of garbage.
Is there any way to block that?
Well, my method is when I get something like that, I basically send them something back that they'll never forget,
like a huge file, or I can subscribe them to multiple mailing lists as well.
Basically, unsolicited mail on the Internet is uncool.
You send something to somebody that didn't ask you to send it, you're opening yourself up to all kinds of responses.
Right.
So how angry is this getting you, and how much mail are we talking about?
Well, I'm trying to figure out, like, since I get junk mail regularly, you know, snail mail, should I accept junk email?
You know, it's something I'm trying to resolve in my own head.
But, you know, every day I come, I go to my computer.
You see, the thing is, the difference between junk mail that you get in your mailbox is that the people have paid something to send that to you,
and, you know, they've invested in you a little bit.
On the Internet, you can send mail for free, and that works to your advantage as well,
because you can send them back what they send you, and you can multiply that by ten if you want.
Right.
And they have to deal with exactly the same thing.
You don't need a special permit.
It's a totally different set of rules, you know, and if people start clogging up your mailbox with junk,
it's going to be a real pain for you, because it's not costing them anything to do it.
Right.
So they can abuse this, but then again, by the same token, they can be abused right back.
I see.
So I think that's the best way.
You give them a taste of their own medicine.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Good luck.
Bye.
Okay.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hello?
Go ahead.
Are you all right?
Yeah.
Speak up, please.
I have a problem.
You've got to speak up a lot louder than that.
Yeah.
I'm having a problem with the phone company.
Okay.
What is this, then?
Okay.
AT&T is my long-distance carrier.
Okay?
Okay.
And I received my bill recently, and I have Sprint on it.
Okay.
That's my carrier.
All right.
A call that was made, a collect call that I received last month.
Okay.
When I called up Sprint Racing, how, why did they switch my phone with my authorization?
According to them, they have no record of me on their computers.
You say that this is for a collect call?
Right.
So how is that?
Well, you see, when you get a collect call, it's not necessarily going to be with the carrier that you've chosen as your long-distance carrier.
It can be any carrier.
It depends.
People can call you collect from any long-distance company, and if you accept it, the long-distance company will bill you.
So it's got nothing to do with what you select.
But isn't it strange?
Because I received calls from this person before, and it has never appeared on Sprint's invoice.
It's always been on AT&T.
Uh-huh.
That, to me, seems strange.
So you recognize the phone number the person called from?
Yeah, I accepted a call.
Okay.
Well, that person changed to a long-distance company, then.
Well, I thought that Sprint only operated in the United States.
This is from Rhode Island.
It's from where?
Jamaica.
Jamaica.
Well, they have things called Sprint Direct, I think is what it is.
I have no idea.
Basically, every long-distance company has a way to get back to the United States now from different countries.
And if you call that particular number, which is usually toll-free from that country, you can get connected at a certain charge.
And that would apply to collect calls, as well.
So you can be called collect virtually from any country now from any long-distance company, as well.
So any long-distance carrier can accept the charges?
If the person in that particular country decides to call the contact number for that long-distance company, yes.
Then it'll be passed on to you.
My initial reaction was to refuse to pay for the call because Sprint is not my carrier.
Right.
Well, again, it's got nothing to do with what your carrier is.
It has to do with what the person making the call selected.
But I'm the one who's paying for the call.
Well, that's true, but you're not the one that placed the call.
With a collect call, that's different.
That's the only time something like this can happen.
For instance, when Bernie S. was in prison and we got all these collect calls from him, we got billed by this strange company called Locktel.
A company that you never heard of?
A company we never heard of, a company we don't know how to get a hold of.
And it was legal?
It's legal because he's the one making the collect call.
Right.
He's the one that made the call in the first place, and the only choice he had was to go through that particular company.
So that company called us collect, and of course, if we wanted to accept the call, we had to accept it on those terms.
It sort of annoys me because I've never, this is kind of strange, I've never seen this before.
But I guess if you say so.
No, it makes sense.
You're right to question it, but there's really nothing you can do other than not accept the calls.
Right.
Thank you very much.
Okay, take care.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up.
Yes, hello, I wanted to know about your long-distance warehouse people.
Long-distance warehouse, yeah, I haven't heard about them in a while.
There's one that uses the number 10297.
Okay.
Do you know anything about them, and if it's, I just never heard of anything like this before.
I went ahead and used it, and it seemed to save a lot of money, but I didn't know, I don't know anything about them.
Have you gotten billed yet?
Yes.
Okay, and was the bill what they said it would be?
Well, it was, what I did was I did a comparison call.
I called the same number on my regular carrier, and then I called it using them, and it was like half.
So you actually saved money with them.
Yeah, but I just, it kind of makes me nervous to use a company I've never heard of that has access to my phone number.
I don't know if there's any problems with that sort of thing or not.
Well, the only problems I've heard of from companies like this so far are them signing people up for one-plus service,
and, you know, without your permission.
It's possible that was just some sort of a clerical error, and that these companies are actually quite legitimate.
They can afford to provide you with lower phone rates because they buy them in bulk from the phone company themselves,
from different phone companies, and they sell them at a substantial discount.
And so you're able to benefit from that way.
So, I mean, it doesn't seem like there's really any catch as far as this goes,
other than just dialing that carrier access code.
And I don't know, you know, if your records are not secure with this company,
they're not secure with any company, to be honest.
AT&T, MCI, Sprint, you know, your records are open virtually to anybody that calls in and asks for them.
It's kind of crazy, but that's the way it is.
Okay, that's all I needed to know.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Good luck.
You know, speaking of that, have you called AT&T recently?
I don't think I have.
Well, AT&T's got this rather interesting automated service now.
Let's give them a call.
And you can find out all kinds of neat things.
Thank you for calling the AT&T Account Servicing Center.
If you have a touch-tone phone and have questions about your AT&T bill, please press 1.
Let's do that.
Double ring.
You think you're getting transferred to a human.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
Using your touch-tone keypad, please enter your home area code and phone number.
Let's enter 2600.
You just told me 516-751-2600.
If that's right, press 1.
If you're calling about AT&T long-distance service or charges, press 1.
If at any time during this call you're not sure what to do, just stay on the line.
I'll repeat your choices.
Here are your AT&T service choices.
For billing questions or problems, press 1.
Please have your AT&T bill ready so I can help you.
If there's a call on your bill you don't recognize, press 1.
Please wait while we access your records.
Please enter the phone number of the call you don't recognize.
That's all you have to do.
Enter the phone number.
Let's enter the White House.
Phone number I know we call a lot.
The phone number you want me to check is 202-456-1313.
If that's right, press 1.
If not, press 2.
Basically, if you have called that number, it will tell you who it belongs to.
We can pick anybody in the country, enter their phone number,
and find out who it is they're calling.
As long as we know.
We can say that there's a fairly good chance that...
Remember when we played with CBS's bill a few months ago?
There's a pretty good chance that somewhere in the CBS organization
they've called the White House or something like that or some particular number.
This thing will give us the name attached to the phone number
without any kind of verification whatsoever.
It's wide open.
This isn't atypical of AT&T.
All phone companies do this to some degree.
They may ask you for some kind of verification, but it's not hard to get that.
It's not hard to get that verification in the first place.
They sometimes ask you for the three digits following your phone number on your phone bill.
It's easy to call your phone company and ask them what those three digits are
because you don't have your phone bill handy.
Then you've got the three digits and you can do anything you want.
It's just a question of how ignorant people are running the computers.
212-279-3400.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hi, how are you?
Pretty good. How are you?
I was wondering, is there any way to connect an external modem
up to a multi-line office phone?
Yeah, actually there is.
Every time I go into the wall jack, I get no dial tone.
Going from the handset into the computer, I get no dial tone.
How can I do this?
What kind of multi-line phone system is it?
Is it digital or analog?
It's analog, but it's hooked up into a computer system or something like that.
It's like in an office.
I just wanted to put a laptop into it.
The only jacks here are the jacks that go into this office phone system.
Does it use a normal phone jack or is it the big fat plugs?
It's a six-line, six-thing plug.
No, it's using the normal jacks, the four.
Well, typically on an office phone that uses an RJ-11 jack,
only they use all six wires?
Yes.
Normally, at least, if you plug a modem in, it should use the middle two wires.
What you might need to do, depending on the wiring, is...
Use the middle two wires? What colors would they be?
Normally, red and green are the two middle.
Just use the red and green?
No, normally it would be used.
The fact that you're telling me that it doesn't work sounds like they wire a bit differently.
What you might try doing, there's two things you could do.
One of them is to try different pairs of wires out of the six
and find two that match that actually give a dial tone.
That's one thing to do, since obviously it is not the two middle ones.
It might be odd and even.
They could use whatever scheme they like.
Another thing that you could do that will definitely work,
however you won't have control of the switch hook with your modem,
is to unplug the handset, if you can.
Yes.
And plug your modem into the handset jack.
I've tried that now, and that's the way I would really like to go.
When I get doing it that way, I'm still not getting a dial tone in the computer.
You'd have to actually select the line manually on the phone.
And then I hear the dial tone.
Right.
But it's not going over to the computer.
Really?
Yeah, and that's going from the handset directly into the modem.
Yeah, if you're unplugging the handset and plugging the small RJ-14 jack directly into the modem.
And then on the other end of it, I put a four prong so that it fits inside the modem jack.
You don't have to.
You could actually fit the RJ-14, sort of like position it in the center.
Oh, okay.
It doesn't have to fit exactly, as long as it's in the middle.
Okay, I'll try that.
You should be able to pick up a line on the phone, select the line, and then pick up the dial on the computer, and you should have dial tone.
Yeah, it doesn't seem to be working, but I'm going to keep playing with it.
That should work.
That's what I figured.
Oh, yeah, it's definitely been done.
Okay.
All right, thanks a lot.
Okay, good luck.
Okay.
Good evening, you're on.
Thank you very much for that comment.
Good evening, you're on.
Thanks a lot.
Okay, good luck.
Okay.
Nice to hear myself.
Good evening, you're on.
Hi.
To the lady or to anybody that wants to know about the Long Distance Wholesale Club, I have an 800 number for them.
Okay.
Long Distance Wholesale Club, they're down in Chantilly, Virginia, and they're 1-800-787-7887.
Have you used them?
Yeah, I have.
Well, I have.
I had to make a one-hour call out to Colorado, and I did save on it.
And the reason why I got their number was because I had a problem.
The first time it went through, it picked up it.
It was a strange call, so I hung up and redialed, but it still came through on my – because I had –
you see, the problem was is I had nobody really to call when I first used 102-97 to say,
hey, that was the wrong number, I want it taken off my bill.
Right.
So I had to wait until I got billed, and I had to call the billing agent, which at the time was USBI.
Now, they've since changed over to Telco.
That's their new billing agent.
Telco?
T-E-L-C-O.
They actually got that word?
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Wow.
Yeah, and Telco tried to help me but couldn't.
They said, all right, you have to go to LD, so then they gave me LD's number.
This is for what, a 12-cent call or something?
Yeah, it was 17 cents, and they gave me my tax.
So actually, I was very surprised because a lot of times when you try and scout these other companies down,
they do their very best not to be available.
These people were available.
They're there from like 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Central Time.
They were helpful, and the only problem was is that they're not hooked into 9x,
so they couldn't just take it off my phone bill.
They had to send me a check, but they sent me a check for 19 cents.
You know, I got my money back, and it didn't take long.
They sent you a check for 19 cents, huh?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I said this is stupid.
She says, well, I'm very sorry.
Right now, we're not hooked up.
Well, actually, the local phone company used to do that all the time whenever you reported a problem with a coin phone.
Yeah, but that was when it cost 5 cents.
Sometimes they would send you change.
But that's when it cost 5 cents to make a check.
They never sent change.
Now it costs, you know, $1.50 or something.
But anyway, I felt that they were polite.
They also sent a nice letter with it, and they made themselves accessible.
So, so far, so good.
Uh-huh.
Okay, well, that's good to hear.
Thank you.
Thanks for calling.
I don't know.
What do you think?
Have you made a call with 102-97 yet?
No.
Those are the ones that said that your long-distance instructions have changed, right?
Or your dialing instructions have changed.
It was a clever advertising ploy.
Yeah.
Yeah, to make it seem like the phone company was telling you that.
It was too cute for me.
I avoided them.
But I mean, if you can actually save money with them, would it not be to your advantage?
Yeah, but I save money right now with AT&T True Savings.
Not anymore, because their True Savings are going up.
Well, I guess they have to pay for those True Savings somehow.
They'll be less True Savings.
Yeah, and they have to pass it on to everybody else.
Yeah.
Unbelievable the things AT&T is doing.
How about the new 9X calling plan?
I finally got confirmation from a 9X representative saying that after a year, they do re-evaluate your phone number.
And they will charge you a new rate based on how much you use it over that year.
But, you know, if you have two or three lines and you simply hop from one to the other, I mean, you know, that's fine.
If you want to play that kind of a game.
I wish they would just come up with a flat fee for everybody, you know, and just leave it at that.
You can call anywhere at 914-212-718-516, all that.
And maybe eventually there will be a flat fee for the entire country.
Because, you know, long distance really isn't long distance anymore.
It's not.
It's just a short hop between two points.
Yeah, that's what it's come down to.
All right, good evening, you're on the air.
Go ahead.
Oh, hello.
Yes, hi.
First of all, I'd like to say I agree with you about the lobbying on the Congress about the Internet censorship bill.
I was trying to do that, actually, over six months ago.
And I called various senators and congressmen.
Most of them were a little bit ignorant or feigned ignorance about the, that is to say, the people in the office, ignorance about it.
But they gave me a good response.
And I have no idea.
Well, you know, every phone call to a congressman means something.
As you can see, Newt Gingrich only got 12 today.
You better believe every call counts.
Yeah, there's no doubt about it.
Because so few people actually do it.
What?
So few people actually make the call in the first place.
I know, I know.
Also, could you repeat that number that that woman just before me gave out?
Oh, I didn't write that down.
But I imagine if you call 800-INFORMATION and ask for Long Distance Wholesale Club, you'd probably get it that way.
Oh, okay.
All right, well, my main topic was the gripe about 9X.
Did anybody notice how terrible that they have a new policy with directory assistance or new format or whatever you want to call it?
What is it?
Well, you call directory assistance and you get, like, this recording that says,
Welcome to 9X Directory Assistance or something like that.
And you don't get the recording.
And then the recording asks you, What city, please?
And you just say it like you don't know if anybody's listening or not.
And then it waits a few moments and it asks you, What is the listing?
And then finally, in varying degrees of time, you'll get a live operator on, or maybe not even sometimes.
Sometimes the number just comes on automatically.
But often it's the wrong number.
They're not even accurate on the thing.
Then after that, sometimes, fairly often, if they don't even give you an accurate reading, you didn't notice.
Well, I don't call information a whole lot.
Oh, I do.
It costs too much money.
That's what phone books are for, you know?
Well, I'll tell you.
Well, you know, I save a lot of money.
I have a certain handicap where my information numbers are free.
Well, that's good.
I use them a lot because you can figure out what the handicap is.
The thing is, you can save a lot of money with CD-ROMs, you know, that have the entire country on a couple of disks.
And you can simply look it up that way.
In a fraction of a second, you'll have a listing as well as other numbers, you know, in addition.
So that saves a lot of money over 9X and AT&T.
Right.
Well, I wasn't even talking about money.
I'm just talking about the inconvenience.
And it's sort of like it just gives you an annoying feeling the way that it's used.
And it's sometimes inaccurate.
And also after that, when you do get the number, you know, the computer voice tells you the number.
And then they have this thing.
Now, before they repeat the number a second time, they'll say, the computer voice will say,
for an additional charge of 35 cents, say yes or at the tone.
And you'll automatically dial the number.
Right.
So you have to wait for all that to go through because I don't want to do that.
I want to dial it myself.
Right.
But to get it a second time, you have to sit through all that.
Right.
And, you know, even if you say no, it still tries to connect the call for you.
I think it's looking for any voice whatsoever.
Oh, of course.
It doesn't know if it's a yes or no.
It's just any kind of sound.
Well, most voice recognition systems know the difference between yes, no, and a lot of other things.
Really?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Call AT&T, and they'll say, press or say one now.
Press or say two now.
You don't need a touch-tone phone anymore.
Really?
What's that, their 800 numbers?
It's one of AT&T's numbers.
But I'm seeing that in an increasing number of places, actually.
Really?
Well, that's amazing.
The directory assistance that you mentioned, though, that's something we played with a few weeks ago
when they had it in Washington, D.C.
And what we were able to determine was that, in fact, they are recording your voice,
playing it back for a human who then punches in the right...
Yeah, it's one of the operators, and they say it's piped in or something.
Right.
I got very angry with them a couple weeks ago.
I kind of lowered my cool, and I started sort of cursing them out through it,
and they immediately put me on to a supervisor, another supervisor.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Yeah, so they hear what you say.
It's not...
Oh, yeah, they hear it right away.
But I think they do it because they probably fired a lot of people,
so they have many less operators or something.
That's true.
They are firing quite a few people.
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks for the info.
Okay.
All right.
What I'd like to do now is try, see if they have it, first of all, for our local information,
and then see if we can ask for a number without having a human say anything to us at any time.
Okay?
It should pick up.
It should ask us, what city?
Right?
We say, what city?
It should say, what listing?
Still talking to the computer.
We say, what listing?
Then it connects to a human who doesn't have to say anything to us,
who will then push the button that plays the message as to what the number is.
Now, if the human being actually speaks and says, here's your number,
the whole experiment is blown,
because where you want to do this without talking to a single human being
and having a single human being talk to us.
So if a human talks to us, the experiment is a failure.
Let's try it.
Oops.
Okay.
Let's try getting that again.
411.
9X, what listing?
9X, what listing?
WBAI, New York.
WBAI?
Oh, rats.
You know, you think we should try 555-1212?
Okay.
Let's try that again.
Nothing ruins your day like hearing a friendly human voice.
9X, what listing?
WBAI, New York.
Thank you.
That's a one, isn't it?
Yeah.
Watch this.
No.
Please hang up.
Okay.
Thank you.
Actually, they've improved.
They don't connect you anymore when you say no.
Yeah, but you got a human.
And they hung up.
I didn't hang up.
They hung up.
Yeah, I did get a human.
You know, it's hard.
It doesn't quite work yet,
but eventually they'll get rid of all the humans
and we'll just hear computers.
People at 9X will be happy.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hal?
Hi.
Yeah, I'm here to put in a complaint about PSI.
Okay.
Let's hear it.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, my username is dmra
and I recently signed up for PSI for about two weeks.
Uh-huh.
And I'm trying to get off through email
and I haven't gotten through.
They've been just sending back and forth
and saying that I got the address wrong,
I got that wrong.
Uh-huh.
And I called my credit card company
and they told me they can't do anything about it
until I receive the bill
and then I have to do this and so forth.
Now, did PSI make you sign a contract?
Yeah.
Okay.
You see, the problem we're having
is that our credit card company is saying
because we signed a contract
that we're liable to whatever PSI says,
which I think is complete nonsense
because the contract was signed in the false pretenses
and as far as we're concerned it's a fraudulent charge.
Why is it that you are trying to disconnect from PSI?
I signed up for about two weeks and so forth
and then I was just seeing what their internet is for
so I could, you know,
kind of shop around for the best internet there is.
Uh-huh.
And so I signed up for two weeks
doing this on my college internship and so forth
and then within that two-week period,
I tried to get off
and it just wouldn't let me get off
and by the time I sent the email
it just kept sending it back saying
the address and billing was wrong,
it didn't recognize my username,
it didn't recognize my emailing address and everything
and it's just been going on and on.
Did you try calling them?
Uh, yes.
I tried calling them
and the interesting part about it
is no one can give me an answer
because they say,
that's not the department,
that's the billing department.
That's exactly the problem we had
is the departmental conflict.
One department doesn't speak to another department
and they want to pass it off onto each other.
You need to go as high up as possible.
First of all,
how long a period of time did you sign up for?
For about two weeks.
The two-week free trial.
Uh-huh.
Oh, it's a two-week free trial.
Yes.
Okay.
So your two weeks are up.
Yes, and I decided that I didn't like PSI
and I wanted to switch to another company.
Right.
And my username is DMRA
and I sent all this
and I even tried to get the name
of the president of the company
and the first person I spoke to wouldn't
and I had to call Virginia, like,
so many times to first sign on
and then to get off.
What's the pain in that?
Well, they have an 800 number
so you don't have to call Virginia.
They only take orders there.
They only take orders
and they keep referring me
to the number in Virginia.
Well, actually, they can transfer you.
They told me they can't.
Well, they're lying
because they can't.
I've been transferred on that number.
Yeah, because I asked them many times
and they just told me,
they told me,
we can't transfer you
and I called Virginia
and I keep calling
and the phone's over the air.
Do you notice how when you call Virginia
you get the exact same recording
as when you call the 800 number?
Yeah.
So it's going to the same place.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, now, has anything showed up yet
on your credit card bill?
Nothing.
I haven't received a bill yet.
Have you signed anything?
The only thing I signed
was to log on my credit card
and the whole thing
to start off with a two-week trial.
Okay.
What you need to do
is notify your credit card company now
because undoubtedly
that charge will go through.
Yeah, I notify them already.
All right.
And what do they say?
They say they'll...
They can't do anything
until the bill comes in
and then they'll try to dispute with them
and resolve that with the company.
It sounds like you're going down
the same road we're going down.
Mm-hmm.
It's unfortunate
this kind of thing
has to happen so many times.
Mm-hmm.
Stay in touch with us.
Let us know how things work out
with them
because we're trying to keep track
of all the PSI cases
that are out there
to see if...
Okay, what's the best buy out there
for other internets and so forth?
I'm sorry?
What's the best buy
for other internet sites and so forth?
Better than PSI.
Where are you located?
Manhattan.
Okay.
Try ESCAPE then.
ESCAPE.
Yeah, that's the one that's nearest.
Yeah, service provided.
Yeah.
ESCAPE.
Do you have a modem?
Yes.
Okay.
212-888-8212.
Okay, 212.
Can you repeat that again?
Yeah, 212-888-8212.
You can't sign up that way?
There's no guest login.
Oh, okay.
You have to call by voice.
And what's the number for that?
212-888-8780.
87...
Oh, okay.
Okay, thanks a lot, sir.
Good luck.
Keep us updated on the PSI situation.
Okay.
Bye.
I've gotten a lot of email, too,
from people all over the world
with PSI complaints.
So this goes to show
that once you have a run-in with a company,
you'll get all kinds of other stories.
What we'll try to do is compile them all
and then next week for our special PSI show,
we will be happy to spread those around.
See if we can fit in one more phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
How are you doing?
Hi.
I have a question.
I received a thing in the mail from NYNEX
about free calling plans...
Right.
...for various options for local calls,
local and area regional calls.
Right.
Have you any opinions of those?
They can be very good if you know how to use them.
You see, what they do is
they look at your phone bill for the past year
and they give you an average of what you spend per month.
They take three months.
They average that out
and they give you a set price
for what you spend to call all 212, 718, 914, and 516.
Yeah.
Now, if you spend a lot of money,
you'll pay a lot of money every month.
If you spend only a little bit,
you'll pay a little bit.
So we found it's to your advantage
to find a phone number in your house
that you don't use all that much
and simply switch your calling pattern
to that particular phone number.
And then you can, say,
make unlimited phone calls
for as little as $10 a month.
I only have one line.
Okay.
Well, then you'll have to use
whatever the average is on that.
But you can make a lot more phone calls now
without having to worry about cost or time.
Okay.
And I have a question.
What happened to Bernie S.?
Bernie S. has a hearing coming up on Friday.
Okay, so I'll hear about this next week.
You'll hear about it next week, yes.
Okay, thank you.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Thanks for calling.
Well, I guess that's just about it for now
on this Internet Day of Protest.
Let's protest our way out there.
Let's give out those 800 numbers one more time
to call Congress.
800-962-3524
and 800-972-3524.
Okay.
Call those numbers.
You can be connected to any representative,
any representative,
any senator you wish.
It's that easy.
Until next week,
this is Manuel Goldstein for FiberOptic.
Have a good night.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Building Bridges, your metro community and labor report.
Fighting the attacks on basic human services and our ability to earn an income.
Defending our community and worker organizations for social change.
Exploring the dimensions of race, gender, and class in the urban environment.
Building Bridges, where we live, where we work, how we organize.
Produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash.
Join us Thursday evenings, 8 to 9 p.m. over WBAI 99.5 FM.
I can't feel.